2020: Our Year on Twitter

This blog post showcases our tweets that have gained the most popularity this year!

January

Item 62 of #Highfieldina100items is a 1964 @unisouthampton Freshers’ conference programme. Wine and cheese party in the Refectory anyone? #HighfieldCampus100 #ExploreYourArchives @UniSotonAlumni @Union_Soton @HumanitiesUoS @HistoryAtSoton @HistoricalSoton @soton pic.twitter.com/iS3yqxscla

Fresher’ Conference Programme, 1964 [MS310/73 A4087]

February

Item 87 of #Highfieldina100items is a photograph of tree being planted in honour of the first nursing graduates @unisouthampton in October 1986 @HSciences pic.twitter.com/WX4dYWmlOW

Tree planting in honour of First Nursing Graduates, Oct 1986 [MS1 Phot/1/26/1]

March

March’s #documentofthemonth is a letter from Reverend Patrick Brontë, the father of the Bronte sisters that were writers, to the first Duke of Wellington discussing his ideas on firearms. He judges the musket he has drawn “to be the best, for all the purposes of a soldier.” pic.twitter.com/qs6t8T2muy

Letter from Reverend Patrick Brontë to the first Duke of Wellington [MS62 WP2/89]

April

#HappyBirthdayYourMajesty! We mark the Queen’s 94th birthday with this photograph of her visit to @unisouthampton in 1966. Here she is met by Chancellor of the time, Lord Keith Murray. During her visit she saw an exhibition of Kinetic art, and the campus @NSTheatres. #Archives pic.twitter.com/jMyyxKsb83

Queen Elizabeth II meeting Chancellor of the time, Lord Keith Murray, 1966 [MS1 Phot/39 ph3372]

May

To mark #NationalWalkingMonth, why not discover Southampton through Jane Austen’s eyes with this blog post? Jane Austen’s Southampton | University of Southampton Special Collections (wordpress.com) #AllSaintsChurch #NewBridge #NetleyAbbey #JaneAusten #Archives @SotonEnglish @SouthamptonHid1 @SotonianHistory @HistoricalSoton @sadtht

Tobias Young ‘A near view of Southampton in 1819; taken from the banks of the canal near the tunnel’ (1819) in Cope, Sir W.H. Views in Hampshire, v.4: illus. 116 [Rare Books Cope ff 91.5]. Castle Square is thought to be the large house with tall chimneys in front of the castle.

June

A lost view of Southampton’s High Street is today’s #ThursdayThought. On the left is the Audit House (with balcony), its upper floor housing the municipal offices and the open ground floor, a market. @HistoricalSoton @SouthamptonHid1 @SotonianHistory @SotonStories pic.twitter.com/w9rAbxjL4U

Southampton High Street [pc3393]

July

No room on the charabanc in this week’s #MondayMemory which features a photograph of an outing from Southampton’s Crown & Sceptre pub in August 1921. @HistoricalSoton @SotonianHistory @SouthamptonHid1 @SotonStories pic.twitter.com/GDUp6Q5p2G

Crown and Sceptre Outing, 3 Aug 1921 [Rare Books Cope Photographs ph2701]

August

Throughout August we will be posting tweets on #holidaysandjourneys. The Royal Pier, Southampton, was opened by the Duchess of Kent and Princess Victoria in July 1833: the original pier had a central carriage-way and footways on either side. @SotonStories pic.twitter.com/jH5itL5nm5

The Royal Pier, Southampton [pc2155]

September

In the days before social distancing, these photographs show students enjoying the green spaces on Highfield campus in the summer of 1995. #UOSstudentlife@explorearchives@ArchiveHashtag@UniSotonAlumni

Students on Highfield campus, 1995 [MS1 Phot/2/10/3]

October

Today’s #UOSstudentlife tweet features a photograph of the Montefiore House Halls of Residence under construction in 1977. The halls are now part of the Wessex Lane Halls Complex. Did you stay in these halls as a student? Are you staying in these halls this year? @UniSotonAlumni pic.twitter.com/K07aREr1mM

Montefiore House, 1977 [MS1/Phot/22/4/1/2]

November

Today’s #ExploreYourArchive theme is labels, and so we show a label from our Basque child refugee collections. You can find out more about these collections here: southampton.ac.uk/archives/resou… @explorearchives @ARAScot @basquechildren @Civil_War_Spain @paxcyclist pic.twitter.com/kF1LhS57mC

Travel label of Rafael Flores

December

Today’s #WinterWarmers tweet is an image of The Avenue in Southampton, following the great snow storm of 25 April 1908 @HistoricalSoton @SotonStories pic.twitter.com/8Pm7OY3U8q

The Avenue, Southampton, 25 Apr 1908 [pc4265]

We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year. Join us for our first blog in 2021, which will look back at what Special Collections got up to in the year 2020.

Celebrating nurses: the life of Inge Kallman

Today we share one of our lesser-known collections, the papers of Igne Kallman (MS 386 A4046). It is especially appropriate to do so on International Nurses Day as Kallman worked as a nurse for many years in the NHS.

Nursing graduates, probably at Hope Hospital [MS 386 A4046/6/12]

The International Council of Nurses (ICN) first celebrated nurses on this day in 1965; nearly 10 years later, in 1974, it was officially made International Nurses Day. Each year since then, the ICN prepares and distributes the International Nurses’ Day Kit which contains educational and public information materials, for use by nurses everywhere.  12 May is no arbitrary date but the anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale, widely considered a founder of modern nursing.

So on to our ‘nurse of the day’, Ingeberg Pauline Kallman, who was born on 12 June 1924 in Dusseldorf, Germany.  Inge came to England with her parents, Margaretha and Ernst, as refugees in 1939, settling in Manchester where family connections had a factory.  Like many others in their position, they had to face a new life in considerably reduced circumstances, starting off in one room.

Kallman’s German passport; note the red ‘J’  [MS 386 A4046 1/1/1]

The collection includes personal records for Inge and her parents including their German travel passes and other records concerning their emigration to the UK. There are also some early twentieth century photographs of Inge and her family in Germany and from their first years as British citizens.

Inge worked in a clothing factory and then trained first in general nursing at City of Salford Hope Hospital, Eccles, 1945-8, followed by midwifery at St James’s Hospital, Balham and the South London Hospital for Women and Children.  She later took a Nursing Administration course at the Royal College of Nursing.  She held posts in Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Leeds before moving to regional level, first with the Sheffield Regional Hospital Board and then the Mersey RHA in 1970. She retired in June 1984 and thus had worked for more than 39 years in the health service.

Kallman’s certificate in “invalid cookery” dating from 1946 [MS 386 A4046/3/1]

Her final post in the NHS was in Liverpool and at that time she and her mother (her father had died probably in the early 1950s) moved to live in a bungalow in Ainsdale near Southport.  Inge’s mother died in 1994.

In her retirement, Inge travelled and studied.  From 1988-92 she studied part-time at the Edge Hill College of Higher Education.  She was awarded a BA in History and Applied Social Science from the College in 1992; her thesis focused on ‘Jewish Poor Relief in Liverpool, 1811-1882′.  In 2001-2 she studied a Current Affairs course with the Worker’s Educational Association.

Image of two nurses cleaning; we believe Inge is the right [MS 386 A4046/6/12]

Inge had an active retirement and the bulk of the collection dates from this period of her life.  There are papers concerning her study at the Edge Hill College of Higher Education including research notes, essays and examination papers; two diaries from holidays to Geneva and Canada and large quantity of photographs and slides of holidays, days out and family and friends.

After suffering minor strokes, Inge took up residence in the Morris Feinmann Home, Manchester in 2002.  She died, aged 85, on the 12 January 2009.

The theme for this year is “A voice to lead – Heath for All”. So on this day we would like to express our thanks to Inge – and all nurses around the world – for the work they do.

They came from near and far to do their patriotic duty – staffing the University War Hospital

Staff at the University War Hospital, 1918 [MS1/Phot/39 ph3104]

11 November 2018 marks the centenary of the end of the First World War. To commemorate this, we take a look at the contribution of the staff of the University War Hospital at the Highfield campus site.

Under the command of Dr Lauder, who had been the Medical Officer for Health for Southampton, the Hospital was staffed by professional nurses and members of the Volunteer Aid Detachments (known as VADs). As well as nursing, VADs also worked in a range of auxiliary capacities from driving ambulances bringing the wounded to the Hospital, to laboratory assistants, clerks, cooks, housemaids and laundresses.

With the start of the war, Southampton hospitals recruited every nurse, VAD and others who could be spared from auxiliary hospitals in the surrounding counties. But as the war progressed, the need for further staff increased.  Gwynnedd Lloyd, a friend of the daughters of Dr Lauder, was considered too young as a 17 year-old to volunteer in 1914. However, in the aftermath of the battle of the Somme, she was invited to join the VADs and to work at the University War Hospital.

The VADs lacked the training and skill of the professional nurses and tended to perform duties that were less technical. As a new VAD, Gwynnedd Lloyd noted that her duties consisted of “making beds and waiting on sister” as well as taking trolleys around and twice a day collecting rubbish. But as time went on, with the flow of the wounded into the hospitals and the demands it placed on the staff, the line between the professional and the volunteer became far less distinct, leading to recognition that the VAD and nurse differed little beyond the level of training. Gwynnedd Lloyd was assigned to assist with one of the hutted wards at the Hospital and even as a relatively untrained VAD was expected to cover shifts of around 10 hours.

Hutted ward decorated for Christmas, c.1915 [MS1/Phot/39 ph 3108]

The women who volunteered as VADs saw their work as a patriotic duty and a useful contribution to the war effort. Whilst some were local to Southampton, others who served as nursing staff at the University War Hospital came from all across the UK, the Channel Islands, Ireland and Canada. It is estimated that somewhere in the region of 4,500 Irish women served as VADs during the war effort, and amongst the staff of the University War Hospital were women from a number of Irish counties including Counties Kilkenny, Limerick, Longford and Tyrone. Canadian VADs were initially only employed in their homeland working in convalescent hospitals. However, as the war dragged on, it became apparent that they were needed overseas and the staff at the Hospital in 1918 included a number of nurses from New Brunswick in Canada.

Amongst the ranks of the VADs were not only nurses, but a myriad of auxiliary roles such as orderlies, stretcher bearers, clerks, cooks, housemaids and laundresses. Most of the women who served in these roles tended to be from the local area. Fanny Street and her two friends, Jennie Ford and Ethel Taylor, who feature in current Special Collections exhibition My War, My Story, were from Southampton. All three worked in the laundry of the University War Hospital for the whole duration, with Fanny Street becoming the Head Laundress by 1917.

Fanny Street (centre) with her fellow VADs Jennie Ford and Ethel Taylor [MS416/13]

And we find that members of the same family all worked together at the hospital. Three members of the Trodd family from Southampton and members of the Bailey family from Eastleigh worked as maids and cooks. Annie and Hettie Needham from St. Denys were both employed as clerks. And Barbara and Gertrude Long, who lived in Freemantle, worked as a clerk and a laboratory assistant respectively. The Archives holds a notebook and three scientific reports kept by Gertrude Long during her time at the Hospital (MS101/8).

Notebook of lab assistant Gertrude Long [MS101/8]

And so, as we come to the centenary of the end of the First World War, we remember all those who made a contribution, not least the young women who, in some cases, crossed an ocean to help staff the War Hospital here at the University.

Florence Nightingale, nursing and the Crimean War

In 1825 Henry Holmes, agent for the third Viscount Palmerston reported to his master:

Embley has been sold to a Mr. Nightingale from Derbyshire. He is related by marriage to Mr. Carter the MP for Portsmouth and married to a daughter of William Smith, MP for Norwich.

Embley Park in East Wellow, near Romsey, was a stone’s throw from Palmerston’s Broadlands estate. William and Frances Nightingale moved in with their two young daughters, Parthenope, and Florence who would have been 5 at the time of the purchase.

Watercolour of the entrance into the Walis Orchard from the gate of the Forest Lodge, Embley [Cope Collection cq 91.5 EMB]

William was an enlightened man.  He stood as a Whig candidate for Andover, supported the Reform Bill and moved in the same circles as his neighbour, Palmerston.  In 1830 he wrote asking to see his speech on the “Catholic question” [i.e. Emancipation]. [BR113/12/5].  William seconded Palmerston’s candidacy for his Romsey seat in 1830 and they hunt and shot together. 

William chose to tutor his daughter Florence at home, something which was unusual for the period.  Florence felt her vocation in life to be nursing but her family, particularly her mother, were unsupportive.  However, in 1853 she became superintendent to the Institution for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in Distressed Circumstances in London.  Her father had granted her a generous allowance of £500 a year to enable her to take up this position and she impressed everyone with her skills as a nurse and organiser.

Sketch of “Miss Florence Nightingale, the Soldier’s Friend” drawn by Elston, and published by Ellis,1856 [Cope Collection cq 95 NIG]

The Crimean War broke out in March 1854.  The public were appalled by the reports of inadequate nursing of wounded soldiers and the secretary of state at war, Sidney Herbert, was held accountable.  Florence Nightingale was close friends with Sidney and his wife, (Mary) Elizabeth since a meeting a few years previously and thus, on 21 October 1854, she was sent out to the Crimea, with a staff of 38 nurses.  It was during this period that Florence Nightingale began her pioneering work in modern nursing.

After her return from the Crimea, Florence focused on her sanitary and statistical work.  We have three letters she sent to her Hampshire neighbour Palmerston while he was Prime Minister. In May 1862 she writes concerning a reorganisation of the War Office a started by her late friend Sidney Herbert:

This plan ensured direct responsibility in the hands of all departments instead of shifting unstable responsibility hitherto the curse of W.O. administration.

[MS 62 Broadlands Archives GC/NI/5]

The following year she contacts Palmerston again, having been “thinking all night on this matter” [Herbert’s sanitary reforms] in which she is “deeply interested.” [MS 62 Broadlands Archives GC/NI/7]. 

The Crimean War had highlighted the need for an additional hospital.  A site at Netley, on the Southampton Water, was chosen for ease of landing invalids direct from the transport ships.  The plans for the hospital had been made and building started before Nightingale returned from the Crimea.  She wrote a report regarding what she considered to be fundamental flaws in its construction, lighting and ventilation, suggesting alternatives, but Lord Panmure, the [Secretary of state for War / Secretary at War], was unresponsive.  She therefore went over his head to the Prime Minister, her Lord Palmerston but the hospital was built following the original plans.

The Royal Victoria Hospital, Netley. Taken from The Leisure Hour, April 1833 [Cope Collection c NET 45]

Another influential friend of Nightingale’s was Inspector-General Maclean, a Professor of Military Medicine at the Netley Military Hospital.  Here we find a link with the University as Maclean gave the Hartley Institution – a forerunner to the University –  help and counsel in the later nineteenth century.

The University has a long affinity with the health sciences.  In 1894, the Institution was recognised by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons as a place of instruction for students preparing for their first medical examination.  It was not until 1982 that some 20 students joined the University as the first cohort for a nursing degree.  A new school of Nursing and Midwifery was formed in 1995 by the amalgamation of the NHS College of Nursing and Midwifery with the exiting nursing group in the Faculty of Medicine.  Nursing at the University is now ranked 9th in the world and third in the UK according to the QS World Rankings by Subject 2018.

The Nightingale Building on the Highfield Campus which houses the School of Nursing and Midwifery [MS 1 University Collection Phot/19/352]

Florence’s Nightingale’s achievements in the field of nursing are commemorated on campus by the Nightingale Building which opened in September 2000 to house School of Nursing and Midwifery.